Series - A Man After God’s Own Heart
#3 - An Obedient Heart -
2 Samuel 6:1-15
by Rev. John Hannem,
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Several years ago, Reader’s Digest told of a young couple who had just bought a water bed. While assembling the bed, the couple realized they would need a gardenhose to fill it with – and they didn’t own one. So, the husband went to the hardware store and bought one.
They attached the hose to the bed, ran it through the apartment to the kitchen tap and - knowing it would take over an hour for the bed to fill – they left their apartment to run an errand. About an hour later they returned to check on its progress. And that’s when they discovered that what the husband had bought was a sprinkler hose.
Now, we all know what happened to that apartment, and you can imagine how frustrating it must have been to them (not to mention their landlord) to discover the damage their “oversight” had caused to their home and possessions. Just a minor oversight… but it caused an immense amount of damage.
As we finally get back to this series of messages on the life of David we see here in II Samuel chapter 6 a more serious oversight that cost a man’s his life. Now, just so we understand the setting, let’s revue what has happened in this passage. David has just conquered
Now, David loved God so much that he wanted God at the center of his world… and of his nation, so David sought out the Ark of the Covenant to bring it into Jerusalem from the town of Kiriath Jearim where it had lain dormant – unused in the worship of the nation (as far as we can tell) for about 100 years.
What was the ark doing in Kiriath Jearim? Well, approximately 100 yrs. previously,
Now what do you do with a trophy? You display it in a prominent place, don’t you? So the Philistines placed the
Confident of their victory, the Philistines offered sacrifices and incense to their god and then went home to bed. The next morning, their god lay face down on the temple floor. Now, I’m sure this troubled them, but I guess they shrugged it off, picked up the statue of Dagon and placed him back where he belonged. They offered their sacrifices and incense to Dagon and went home again. The next morning, they find Dagon on the floor again – but he wasn’t laying on his face this time. He didn’t have a face anymore. His head & hands had been broken off and were laying on the threshold beside him.
When God had finished with Dagon, He started in on
So the ark was shuttled from city to city, and every where it was taken, those cities were plagued by disease and vermin. Finally, the Philistines decided it was time to return the ark to
Their Philistine priests had advised: “Make models of the tumors and of the rats that are destroying the country, and pay honor to
The oxcart bro’t the ark back to Israel – to a city named Beth Shemesh
1 Samuel 6:15 tells us that “The Levites took down the ark of the LORD, together with the chest containing the gold objects, and placed them on the large rock. On that day the people of Beth Shemesh offered burnt offerings and made sacrifices to the LORD.”
The citizens of Beth Shemesh were so pleased and delighted to have the ark in their city that they decided to look inside the ark. That was a big mistake. The hand of God struck down 70 men who died on the spot. This so upset the city of
Now then, this brings us to our story today. The ark had been residing at the home of Abinadab for about 20 years. And when the time came to have the ark moved to
Then something went horribly wrong...... The cart that carried the ark hit a rough spot and the ark was in danger of falling off. Uzzah reached up and steadied the Ark of the covenant and he immediately is struck dead by God.
What happened? What did they do wrong? David didn’t know… and it tells us in 2 Samuel 6:8 that “David was angry because the LORD’s wrath had broken out against Uzzah…” The Hebrew here describes David has “hot”, “furious”, “incensed.” This shouldn’t have happened. And David hasn’t a clue as to why it happened. It says he became afraid… and had no idea how he would ever get the ark to
Well… what had gone wrong? The Bible tells us in verse 7. “The LORD’s anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act; therefore God struck him down and he died there beside the ark of God.” (2 Samuel 6:7)
His “irreverent act?” What had he done wrong? ..... Well, he’d touched the ark… you weren’t supposed to do that. Numbers 4:15 tells us that only the Kohathites – a family in the tribe of Levi – were allowed to carry the
The
But, when David and the Israelites decided to take the ark into
Why would they do that? Why use an oxcart to carry the Ark of the Covenant into
Well, there are some scholars that believe that David and Israelites had failed to read the instruction manual (The Law) before they moved the
These scholars believe that David and the rest of
I Chronicles 13:1-3 (which gives us a little more information on this event) tells us that “David conferred with each of his officers, the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds. He then said to the whole assembly of Israel, "If it seems good to you and if it is the will of the Lord our God, let us send word far and wide to the rest of our brothers throughout the territories of Israel, and also to the Priests and Levites who are with them in their towns and pasturelands, to come and join us. Let us bring the ark of our God back to us, for we did not inquire of it during the reign of Saul."
You see, David had given this a lot of thought. This was not some haphazard adventure he was embarking on. He consulted people. He asked everyone he knew. He even made sure that the priests and the Levites were on hand. There are 30,000 people on hand for this event. Granted it’s been nearly 100 years since
Now think about this with me for a minute:… if you couldn’t move the ARK SAFELY without poles being in the rings … and if you couldn’t TOUCH the Ark without dying
How do you suppose they got the Ark onto the cart – … you couldn’t ... they used the poles.
They knew …They knew they had to use the poles to move the Ark. And yet they still decided to move the
It was easier! ..... Kiriath Jearim was about 10 miles west of
But why use an oxcart?? That question brings me to a 2nd observation: The Philistines had done it (that’s how they’d returned the ark to
But… it didn’t work. A man died. .... In spite of the fact that the people of
Why wasn’t God pleased? Two reasons… 1. They replaced obedience with laziness
2. and they accepted the thinking of man over the clear commands of God.
Let me ask you .... do you think that could that happen to us? Yeah, it could.
Take laziness for example. Walking with God is hard work. It’s so much easier to do my Christianity on a part time basis. It’s easier to choose to RIDE ALONG on someone else’s faith rather than WALK with God. Walking takes time. Walking takes effort
It takes time to pray. It’s so much easier to allow a preacher to do the praying for us
It takes time to study our Scriptures. It’s so much easier to take the pastor”s word for it and not bother studying things ourselves.
In the book of Acts, we’re told about one of Paul’s mission trips. He’d just gotten done preaching at Thessalonica and had moved on to a city known as
Why shouldn’t I just “ride along” and let someone else do those religious things for me? Because “riding along” takes away from my worship. If all I do is “ride along” – it’s not my faith… it’s someone else’s. Doing my faith the easy way, robs me of the closeness to God I really need/want. And, if I do it long enough - something inside me… dies.
What about accepting the thinking of men over clear commands of God? Well… that’s always been a downfall for believers for ages. The church has too often had the tendency to combine teachings & traditions of men with the pure Word of God.
For example: you remember the story of Galileo? Remember how he’d discovered that the earth orbited the sun rather than the other way around? He was condemned by the church of his day and was threatened with excommunication and perhaps even death if didn’t recant his “error.”
To this day, there are those who believe that it was the Bible that taught that… but that’s not true. Scripture never said anything about the sun or the earth circling anything. The church leaders hadn’t based their doctrine on Scripture.
But, if they didn’t base their doctrine in this matter on Scripture… where did they get it? They got it from a pagan philosopher by the name of Aristotle. Through defective experiment, Aristotle determined that the earth was at rest, and therefore, the sun must orbit the earth and not the other way around.
Galileo believed in Scripture and often opposed those who clung to the teachings of Aristotle. Galileo once wrote: “The holy scriptures cannot err, and the decrees therein contained are absolutely true and inviolable… It was Galileo - not the church of his day – who held to Scripture. And because the Church of that day based their theology – not on Scripture – but on the teachings of a mere man they caused extreme damage to the cause of Christ. There are still skeptics who point to this incident with Galileo as proof of their assertion that the Bible contains errors..
CLOSE: Well, when David and the Israelites chose the easy way to worship God, and when they chose to follow the example of the Philistines rather than God’s Word… the results were devastating. But they weren’t the only ones who have ever done that with God’s Word… and – they won’t be the last. People have handled all kinds of doctrines out of Scripture in these ways. They’ve even handled salvation that way.
Early on in my ministry I made the mistake one time of allowing a fellow minister to give the invitation at a joint VBS that we were holding in our community. The children had learned all week about Jesus and now the time had come to talk to the older ones about becoming Christians. The other preacher was a nice guy. I liked him a lot. But when he gave the invitation I was never so embarrassed in my whole life. He stood up there and gave those kids 5 different ways to accept Jesus.
If they didn’t want to do it one way, they could do it another. He offered them a smorgasbord faith. They could pick and choose any way they pleased to come to Christ.
Now, why would he do that? Because he had grown used to avoiding hard decisions. He wanted a belief system. A faith, that was easy to swallow. He wanted to please all people. He was more than willing to base his theology on the teachings of men rather than the commands of God. Others had basically told him it didn’t matter how you accepted Christ, as long as you were sincere. But friend it doesn’t work that way. The command of God to you this morning is clear: Do you want to belong to Jesus Christ this morning? It’s as simple as ABC
ADMIT I AM A SINNER – For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God ..... There is none righteous, no not one
BELIEVE - John 3:16 "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever BELIEVETH in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
CONFESS JESUS - Romans 10:9 “… if you CONFESS with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved."
Invitation .........